When Russell "opened" his eyes again, he had turned into a dune cat.

He was in a black, starless void.

Becoming one's own psychic in the matrix space - this is a common form of invasion for psionic hackers.

If you don't do it in this way, it's easy to get lost and confuse reality with the matrix space...... After all, memory attacks are the most common means of counterattack; And if it is too unrelated to oneself, it is easy to cause the collapse of consciousness under the self-damage caused by the offensive wall.

The cat is in a pure black maze, spinning around and examining everything in front of it.

The labyrinthine walls are made of materials reminiscent of obsidian, as they have no metallic sheen and a slight bump.

Every defect is a big or small hole.

And now Russell has not even touched the wall...... This is just the outermost layer of firewall, static protection against common intruders.

Russell licked his paws unhurriedly, jumped on the spot twice, moved his limbs, and then jumped high.

He pounced on one wall, then switched back and jumped onto another adjacent wall. In the two walls, which were at a right angle of 90 degrees, Russell bounced lightly and climbed to a height of three or four meters.

This is the limit of protection against the walls of the maze - if you use a disc board to break in, it will take a while to bypass or chisel the wall.

Russell gracefully walked on the walls of the labyrinth, and then jumped high and jumped directly onto the opposite wall when he needed to make a detour. And so on, without even a detour, he reached the other side with just two jumps.

The inert firewall that was able to trap the average hacker for at least twenty minutes took Russell less than twenty seconds to bypass.

“…… Well? ”

After he jumped over the maze wall, he suddenly raised his tail vigilantly.

I saw that the flames burst out the moment he hit the ground - the vast wildfires in all directions completely obscured his vision, and the pain befell Russell as soon as possible.

The illusion is that the cat's body has been completely overwhelmed by fire...... But the hair on his body didn't burn.

"It's a 'fire meteor'?"

Russell meowed, a little puzzled for a moment.

This is a fairly old wallguard, which has long since disappeared from the market.

It also took Russell about two seconds to recall the existence of this thing.

The "Fire Meteor" is special in that it is a special kind of offensive wall - its offensive method is to immediately emit a burning sensation that grows stronger and stronger over time when anyone touches the wall without verifying the key.

In the offensive defense wall, the most commonly used counterattack methods are "memory damage", "pain signal", "reality positioning", and "matrix blocking".

And "Fire Meteor" was the ancestor of the "pain signal" type of offensive defense.

The logic of its defense is this: first, it immediately and indiscriminately attacks all those who request entry. The pain sensation of human beings when they are burned by the flame is converted into a data signal, and then the pain of various burns of different intensities is overwhelmingly output in reverse.

If there is a key in the target chip, then of course it can pass through quickly and will not hurt for too long...... And if you try to break through the wall, it will become more and more painful, and it may even kill people directly.

For the average user, it will only hurt for a few tenths of a second when passing through the company. It's like having your fingers burned by a candle.

But if Russell enters the matrix space far away and attacks the company through the icebreaker program of the disc board...... Suppose the disc in his hand needs ten minutes to calculate the offensive defense without making mistakes. Then his imaginary body would need to stay in the matrix space for ten minutes. This false burning sensation would have lasted so long.

Of course, this pain sensation is fake, and everyone knows that they must not be burned.

But the imaginary body has senses - if the pain is so blurred that you fall here, you can't go back.

It would be much better if you didn't use an imaginary invasion...... It's just a matter of receiving a lot of spam. If the data is not downloaded, it will only be transferred to the disk and will not flow into the chip.

But then it's easy to burn the dish...... Without using imaginary objects, psionic hackers have no advantage. It is difficult to break through the outermost firewall by technical means.

Thirty years ago, the Fire Meteor was the best commercial offensive wall.

It's easy to use, it's really the same.

Anyway, it only takes a moment to verify the physical body when it passes, but it takes a long time to crack it remotely. Although it may not be very defensive, the pain of treating everyone equally, will make the psionic hackers reluctant to attack this company first.

- As long as the psionic hacker group prioritizes attacks on other companies, rounding up is equivalent to protecting their own company.

It was later abandoned, not because psionic hackers cracked the mechanic.

Because it doesn't have much mechanics to speak of - its icebreaker picks aren't complicated.

In the case of constantly outputting a large amount of garbage information, it is impossible to compound an overly precise wall in the back, otherwise it is prone to bugs in the case of this kind of data throughput.

Explained by the illusion in matrix space...... It was at the end of the wall of fire that it was the most simple wall of light.

That's an inert wallguard. This is equivalent to a verification code that resets every minute.

It doesn't have any technology to speak of, it's just a lot of computation...... It's like an infinite number of math problems, just work them out layer by layer. Those who have the key can get the synchronously generated password directly from the company server, while those who don't have the key can only calculate from the outside and rush in.

But from another point of view, perhaps no technical content is the best technical content......

If I have learned technology and have not learned technology, you are all the same time, and you have to rely on the disc board to calculate, then I will not learn this technology in vain?

Later, because there is a better and more threatening "honeypot" in the offensive defense wall, it is very convenient to open the box in reality and shake a nearby mercenary to physically solve you, so the fire meteor that outputs pain is directly abandoned.

After all, when clocking in and out of work every day, whether it is an employee or a director, everyone is equally burned as soon as they enter the company and leave the company - people will complain after a long time.

There is a high probability that the delphinium will not carry a disc that can crack the fire meteor in a targeted manner. Because it's so simple......

In that case, the delphinium would have to endure the pain of being burned by the fire to maintain the state of the imaginary body, waiting for the disc board to forcibly crack the calculation.

…… Luckily, it was myself who came in.

Russell thought to himself.

It's like someone threatens to explode if they don't solve the math problems within the allotted time – so they go to great lengths to find a math doctor. It turned out that the doctor was asked to stand in a hot sauna and solve a thousand junior high school math problems.

It's not that it can't be calculated, it's mainly that the body can't stand it...... And there is simply not enough time. Even if you know the answer at a glance, it takes time to write.

Russell skillfully endured the pain of being burned by the fire, and soon invoked the icebreaker program to crack the inert wall behind the fire meteor.

An offensive program called "The Great Mathematician".

I saw that a black illusory cone quickly condensed around Russell.

It's like a spinning pencil tip, wrapping Russell in it and speeding forward.

It has no protection against those flames at all. The flames still passed through it, and continued to burn Russell inside.

But less than half a second after the cone had flown up, a wall of light suddenly lit up in front of it.

It's not made up of data, it's not physical...... Rather, it is a myriad of nested hexagonal matrices.

The black Unreal Cone immediately began to spin at full speed. And with each rotation of it, the middle of the hexagonal matrix is disintegrated by a layer—and they immediately shrink and fill in instantly.

If it is a more advanced disc board, the kind with a composite icebreaker program, it can be directly forced to break through at the moment when it "tightens". This is a brute-force solution specifically for the stacking algorithm.

But fortunately, the performance of "Aoi Lily" is very good, and it should be able to be completed quickly without a forced breakthrough.

At this moment, in the outside world, several of the diffuse vents of Russell's prosthetic leg snorted open—and the white hot gas that was visible to the naked eye and steaming from it was constantly expelled from inside.

Looking at his appearance at the moment, the inferior was obviously a little anxious.

He was a little restless...... wants Russell to quit quickly, but he is worried that he is at a critical juncture and affects his state.

In the matrix space, the Great Mathematician's operations soon reach the end.

- It took a total of 46 seconds to crack a total of 863 layers of inert walls.

Just seeing this time, Russell knew very well - the delphinium was definitely not finished.

If she didn't have the "Mathematician" series of discs, it would take at least three to five times longer to force a breakthrough with other discs.

Assuming that she breached the firewall at the same time as Russell, then by the time she cracked the wall, there would be at most half a minute left.

At that point, the delphinium will have to choose whether to move forward or go backwards.

If she chooses to move forward...... And there really is only such a wall, so everyone is happy.

But if there is any guard behind her that prevents her from closing the final general program, then she will ...... backwards Again, one more round of such calculations will be required.

That's the new random number...... That's not all.

Unless the delphinium chooses to escape, this is almost a mortal trap.

- But will she run away?

Maybe, maybe not, but anyway......

Russell suddenly.

The person who set up this bomb program must have had malicious intent in his heart.

Fundamentally different from what the bad guy called "a bad joke", that person was going to blow up the delphinium...... Or there are inferior!

When the wall of light collapsed, the cat went straight to the next floor.

There was still a slight redness on his body...... It's not that the fur burns, but more like the color of the metal as it cools down after being scorched.

It took about five or six seconds for the red light on Russell's body to go out completely.

Before that, Russell was a flower in front of him and arrived in the next dimension.

A hundred cabinets, in a 5 by 20 structure, were piled up in a circle around Russell.

"This is the real caged bird, Delphinch. When you're in the cage, can you still see where the cage door is? ”

A overlapping voice echoed in Russell's ears: "There is only one cabinet with a button to end it all." The rest of the cupboard is empty, and you now have thirty seconds to go.

"Guess what, which cabinet would I hide the button in?

"If you know enough about the inferior, you might be able to know the number that is especially meaningful to him......"

"—calf, I have more than ten minutes."

Russell couldn't help but complain: "Are you so sure that she can get here with thirty seconds left?" ”

There's simply no other psionic hacker guarding the city here.

There is no awareness of remote control, only an automatically triggered message. It's like an empty city that is unguarded, and nothing or trace can be found.

But it doesn't matter.

It's best not to lose time.

Although Russell has prepared several solutions, if the first one can solve the problem, there is no need to come up with the remaining ones.

After having broken through the barriers, the psionic hackers have access here...... It can basically be said to be infinite.

In the void of Russell's cat's body, countless deformed manipulators suddenly drilled out, pointing at all the cabinets with precision.

The offensive program called [Thousand Hands] turned into a hundred synchronous processes, and all the cabinets were opened in an instant.

In the end, the number of cabinets with buttons was "thirteen", and the robot placed the buttons in front of Russell, while the other robots disintegrated and disappeared at the same time.

Russell secretly memorized the number.

Instead of pressing the button directly, he raised his right paw and waved. A projection of an eye pattern appears above the button.

After determining that the button was indeed the program termination instruction, Russell pressed it.

Then, the world around them instantly turned gray and tarnished. The echo that was still in fragments also came to an abrupt end.

So Russell began to retreat.

With every step he took back, the scene in front of him flashed back.

But not like when he came in.

The walls of light had dimmed, the flames had been extinguished, and the labyrinth had dug into the ground—only the black outline of the ground could be seen.

When Russell stood on top of the labyrinth and retreated again...... Before his eyes, the sky was spinning and shaking violently. It's like playing Riptide and moving forward at high speed in a tunnel with your back to the front.

When Russell opened his eyes again, he was back in the real world.

[——Cracked wall]

The real information sign of this thing began to appear in front of his eyes.

【You have successfully invaded: Caged Bird】

[Product category: toys or children's books]

[Manufacturer: Curtain of Ignorance]

[Production batch: Not on sale]

[Review code: not reviewed]

[Product Details: "We are the agents of the god of justice, the clown on the stage, the man in the shell."] ”】

Data Transfer, Formatting, Developer Mode, Power On/Off, Reboot

Russell lightly clicked to turn off.

As for the internal structure...... Let's save it for a later time and use developer mode.

The red light that kept flashing on the iron mask finally went out with a single sound.

"I actually cracked the ......"

The inferior couldn't help but exclaim.

It was the first time Russell had seen such strong emotional fluctuations in an inferior person.

“…… Fortunately, he was not dishonored. ”

Russell couldn't help but explain: "But to be honest, the other party's skills are really a bit poor. A layer of fire sandwiched between the stones on both sides, except for dragging is dragging ......"

Look at the scene with such a jigsaw...... Russell thought that there must be a hard battle waiting for him.

…… With this kind of broken scene, can you also trap the delphinium and the inferior?

Russell had strange doubts in his mind.

He vaguely smelled a strange ...... from this completely unequal "game" Lost patience, broken jars, broken smells.

It's like when running a group, there is a sudden encounter that is almost impossible to defeat - Russell's first reaction is, is this KP going to tear the card?

"It's all right, kid."

But though he thought so, he did not say it, but comforted the boy.

With a click, he unplugged the magnetic connector. Retract the thread into your prosthesis.

Russell covered himself for a few minutes, slightly dizzy head, and sobered up for a moment. Then he raised his hand and took off the iron mask on the child's face, which had been turned off, and was about to turn around and hand it to the inferior one for him to take back to study.

However, Russell saw that the inferior man was suddenly stunned in place, and did not take the mask immediately.

"You ......"

The inferior man's tone was a little hesitant.

Russell saw that he was not reacting right, and he seemed to understand something.

Speaking of which...... The huge mask, like a hood, seemed to completely block the boy's spiritual features.

Now Russell turned around and saw the child's face clearly, and he was also stunned.

He finally realized another trap set by the "game host":

I saw the slender boy under the mask...... With elven ears.